Page 5 of Great White
I involuntarily bubble with a laugh. It’s half from his terrible joke and half from fear of my life.
“Okay, we’ll bring a little back up then.” Fallon pops open the trunk, and I hear some rustling. “This should do.” She expands a nightstick with one flick of her wrist.
“That’s your back up?” I’m not impressed.
“And Smith & Wesson, of course.” She taps her lower back.
“Times two.” March lifts his shirt, flashing me the impressive piece holstered in his waistband.
Fallon begins to walk; well, more like charge the front door.
“March, you kick it in, and I’ll take care of the rest.”
Before I can even mutter a protest, the front door is nearly knocked off its hinges, and we are rushing inside. Everything happens so fast, I can barely keep track of the mayhem. I just see clips of combative images flashing around me. Mostly Fallon assailing Brock. Kicking him and beating him with the nightstick. It’s a sight to behold. Seeing this small, redheaded assassin take down a large, muscle-headed man. She whacks his knee while blocking Brock’s hammering fist, all while I just stand there frozen and useless. March ambushes Brock from behind as he tries to fight her off, hooking his arm around Brock’s neck and squeezing until his tanned cheeks turn red. What feels like a lifetime wrapped in an eternity passes as I watch statically as the man who has been terrorizing me for the last year and a half is beaten and battered and choked until he’s brought down like a condemned city building. Emasculating dust and debris an illustrative sight in the room.
An eye-opening sight. For the first time ever, Brock isn’t a threat — he’s a mark. Fallon and March reduce him into what I am. Easy prey.
I look on with a gross fascination as Fallon wails on him with the nightstick until he’s barely moving. Just left flailing like a suffocating fish.
“Piece of shit.” She kicks him one last time for good measure, then rips the gun out of the back of her pants and points it right at his head. “Dove, come here.”
The sound of my name causes my nervous system to implode. I immediately begin to sweat and shake and fight for air. “Dove,” she repeats more strictly now, but I can’t bring myself to move. I’m frozen.“Dove.”That last demand prompts me to move. I travel across the small living room now splattered with blood.
“Take it.” Fallon shoves her gun in my direction.
I refuse. I can’t.
“Dove.” She snatches my hand and presses the pistol right into my palm. It’s been years since I touched a gun. Not since high school when we used to mess around with my friend Jake’s stepfather’s piece. Stepping behind me, she shadows how I should hold it, pointing it right at the man who is responsible for all my misery. “This is your moment,” Fallon hisses in my ear as March looks on. The weight of their eyes feels like boulders crushing me. “Kill or be killed,” Fallon eggs me on. “You deserve more. You deserve better. You deserve a life free of suppression. Free of fear.”
“You sound like you know what you’re talking about.”
“I do. I know more than you can ever imagine.”
The pain in her voice is so potent, it could actually be my own. This terrifying woman is a kindred spirit. If it wasn’t clear before, it is now, but am I really the same? Am I a killer?
As I look down upon Brock’s beaten body and swollen face, I feel no remorse. No outrage, no pity. Nothing. I feel nothing for this man except hatred. Some part of my past self flickers inside me. The rebellious part. The part that challenged everything and everyone. The part that has been scratching at the lid of its casket wanting to resurrect.
I stare straight into Brock’s bold blue eye. The only one that is cracked open. Fallon really did a damn number on him.
There is nothing there. No hint of emotion. Nothing that begs for mercy. Or for forgiveness. No, the only thing I see in that emboldened blue eye is rage. The same exact look he has when he beats me. When he rapes me. When he toggles back and forth with my life. This last time was one of the worst. I thought I was dead. Believed it to my core. If I let him live, I am surely dead. But can I live with the consequences of taking a life?
My hand shakes as I hold the gun, the tip of my finger flirting with the trigger.
Can I live with myself?
Bang.
I guess we’re going to find out . . .
1
Tate
Present Day
Haveyou ever looked at a woman and thought,now there’s a bitch?
Not in the derogatory sense, so don’t go burning me in effigy. But in thedamn,that woman can take you on a wild fuckin’ ride with only a thirty percent chance you’ll live to tell the tale?
